Soon the artists will sing at the ESC in Malmö. The southern Swedish port city threatens to become a hotbed of anti-Israel protests.

Pro-Palestinian protesters outside Malmö City Hall in April Photo: Johan Nilsson/ap

Olle Lönnaeus, political commentator and newspaper analyst SydsvenskanSweden's largest newspaper outside the capital, Stockholm, predicts the following for the next two weeks in Malmö: “Jew-hatred, riots and terror. This means that the southern Swedish port city will become a hotbed of fight against the Jews.” -Israel protests.

The reason: on May 11, last Saturday, the Eurovision Song Contest, the largest pop contest in the world, will be held in its stadium, and because Israel was allowed to participate in the CES due to its membership in Eurovision. network of public broadcasting companies since 1973, the focus is on The anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) network around the world is responding intensely to this event.

The Malmö organizers, in short, are desperate: this is not how they imagined it! Everything, from the city center to the covered stadium near the Öresund bridge, is decorated and arranged for Eurovision tourism, everything is very pretty, but in the end the protesters only want one scalp, and that is the singer's. Israeli Eden Golan. , who on Tuesday had her first theater rehearsal for her.

Israeli secret service on site

And whatever this singer, daughter of Jewish-Russian immigrants in Israel, has imagined about this northern country: she will hardly be allowed to get to know it. The Israeli secret service Shin Bet has intensively monitored the city and its security measures, and the Israeli delegation will also have to make use of extensive special protection during the rehearsal days in Malmö.

The most depressing thing: Eden Golan must not leave her hotel room during her days in Sweden, the situation is too precarious. Internationally, Israel marks the opportunity for hate speech at the CES. Locally, Malmö has been known for decades for giving little or no support to its Jewish citizens, and that is also, but not only, due to the Muslim immigrants in Malmö. In their neighborhoods, such as Rosengard on the outskirts of the city, large numbers of young people in particular have joined serious criminal gangs and Islamist circles. There is no city in Sweden that welcomes Israelis, none that takes seriously the specific threat it poses to Jews, and Malmö would be the last city suitable for this label.

It is also unclear whether the Israeli delegation and its singer will participate in the welcome gala next Sunday: there could be a great danger not only of the pro-Hamas demonstrations generating bad images, but also, according to people close to the Jewish community. He said there could hardly be any risk of Malmö becoming a place of massacre like Munich at the 1972 Summer Olympics.

At that time, a group of Palestinian terrorists attacked the Israeli team in the Olympic village and murdered eleven of the fourteen athletes. (Incidentally, this attack was the reason Israel's TV stations tried to participate in CES: Israel's pop artists wanted to go to Europe because they were isolated in their neighborhoods.)

Demonized in pop

It is good, however, that the Israeli television network KAN is not intimidated. Israel will participate, even if the song has to be changed; Instead of “October Rain,” Eden Golan will now sing “Hurricane.” Some ESC countries have asked the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in Geneva, home of the Eurovision network, to exclude Israel from the competition due to its war against Hamas.

A dozen artists, interestingly some who consider themselves non-binary people and therefore remained indifferent and not hated in the Gaza Strip for barely more than two seconds, including Swiss co-favorite Nemo, also knelt and called for a “ceasefire” without “October 7” even to mention it. The EBU, however, rejected all demands because the ESC (formally correct, but concretely obviously absurd) was not political.

It is possible that this is what remains as a tradition of this 68th CES since 1956: the intense and partially successful attempt to demonize Israel in the field of pop, and many of them from a group of artists who look for threats like that on the networks social. Many people in the global cultural landscape currently follow what their fans say.